


Everything In Its Right Place

by CloudAtlas



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, Choices, Help, How Do I Tag This, Injury, Magic, Multi, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:21:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25958188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudAtlas/pseuds/CloudAtlas
Summary: “But three threes?” the Witch says. “Oh, three threes is how the worldturns. There are the Witches, and we are Life and we remember. And there are the Fates, and they are Death and they are eternal. And then there’s you and you are Balance. And you forget but oh, youlive.”
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov
Comments: 30
Kudos: 66
Collections: be_compromised AU Exchange 2020





	Everything In Its Right Place

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SorceressSupreme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SorceressSupreme/gifts).



> Written for SoceressSupreme as part of the be_compromised AU Exchange 2020. They asked for, among other things, witchcraft and soulmates, and this is... kinda that? Sort of? I dunno. I blame N K Jemisin and her amazing One Hundred Thousand Kingdoms Trilogy. And perhaps Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell too. And [this Adele music video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk4BbF7B29w).
> 
> Title from [Everything In Its Right Place by Radiohead](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUnXxh5U25Y), who I suddenly remembered that I love. Beta'd by the inimitable **inkvoices**.

Clint darts into the open mouth of an alleyway – or at least as much as he can with an arrow sticking out of his thigh – ducking around two men who are arguing loudly enough that they don’t notice him. Hopefully they’ll be enough of a distraction. Hopefully the alley will lead somewhere helpful, anywhere, just _away_.

But of course it doesn’t.

It’s a dead end. A sheer cliff-face of brick with a scree of garbage at the bottom. Shit. _Shit_. Clint is going to get the shit kicked out of him. He’s probably going to be killed. Jacques and Buck hate nothing more than they hate traitors. Still, he’s not going down without a fight; just because he’s finally reached his limit doesn’t mean he’s going to just lie down and accept his fate. He clenches his hand around his bloody knife, the action making his knuckles sting. He dropped his bow a while back, but his quiver is still attached at his hip. He’s smart, he can do damage with just his arrows if he thinks hard enough.

The wound in his leg throbs.

God, it’s so hard to _think_.

One leg of his dark pants is shiny with his blood, tacky as it dries and making it hard to move. He’s starting to feel lightheaded, his vision spotting at the edges. The alley swims briefly, wavers like a mirage and then – shit, there. How could he have missed it?

A door, propped open in the shadow of the overflowing dumpster. Clint almost sobs in relief.

Now that he’s stopped moving it’s hard to start up again, every pain in his body flaring bright, but he manages, gritting his teeth to stifle his whimpers.

The door is silent as it opens and the interior of the building is dark. He inches inside, wary despite his pain and exhaustion. He doesn’t know this city really, is only here because of the circus. This building could house _anything_ so he’s careful not to shut the door in case whatever is inside is worse than what he’s running from. But there’s nothing, not that he can see; just the faint outline of empty racking and some discarded cables. A chair with one leg missing. A pile of broken breeze blocks.

There’s a crash and a curse and Clint steps back in alarm, losing his grip on the door.

It slams shut.

Everything changes.

He’s stood in a vast grey space, the light diffuse and depth-less. There is no racking or broken chair, no cables or breeze blocks. There’s no _floor_. The wall and door behind him have gone. His mind rebels but his eyes confirm it: he’s in some sort of un-space, a nowhere, a _nothing_. He has walked out of an alleyway in Chicago and into _nowhere_.

He wanted to get away, and he _did_.

And he’s not alone.

There’s a man, danger radiating from him like heat. Large and broad shouldered, tank-like in black stealth gear and military boots. He’s carrying a pistol in a metal prosthetic hand, both gleaming dully in the strange un-light, and he has several knives strapped to his legs. There’s a rifle slung over his shoulder and his expression promises death. But for all that, he seems strangely insubstantial, like he isn’t really there at all. Solid as fog or an image projected onto water. The entire picture sends a lightning bolt of fear up Clint’s spine, years of learning to recognise people more dangerous than him telling him that this man is not to be crossed.

But the man is nothing in comparison to the other Clint can see: a girl, redheaded and slight. Clint almost throws up, vertigo hitting hard because he can’t – there’s something – _what is–?_

It’s difficult to look at her but almost impossible to look away.

She’s – there are _so many of her,_ layered over each other at various levels of transparency, all the same girl. The main one, the one that seems the most solid and real and tangible, looks about thirteen. She wears a vest top, loose shorts, and a feral expression, and carries a bloody knife. But there is another, perhaps fifteen, in a pale pink tutu. Then one who looks perhaps sixteen or seventeen, closer to a woman, which Clint can tell because _she’s naked_. Then there’s one older again, perhaps aged twenty, in a carefully seductive blouse and pencil skirt, and again, this one perhaps older still, in bloody combat gear. All versions of her look hard and unforgiving, all versions look dangerous, and they move with the little girl, mirroring her actions, but imprecisely; some lagging behind, some apparently anticipating her movements. The effect is nauseating, like motion sickness though he’s standing still. His eyes can’t settle, can’t focus, but he also can’t pull his gaze away, either. Not from her or from the strangely insubstantial man.

Panic claws at his throat. What is _happening_?

“Excellent.”

The voice comes from behind him and he whirls to face it, dropping into a fighting stance despite the blaze of pain in his leg. From the corner of his eye he sees the girl and all her ghost-selves do the same, but the man is quicker still.

The man shoots.

There’s a flash and a bang and a shiver, as though reality is shifting, and a dove flies away into the gloom. It takes Clint a moment to realise that the dove is the bullet.

The man doesn’t fire again.

“Good.”

The speaker is a woman, beautiful and dressed in red, her clothing almost seeming to glow in this dim, featureless un-space. She looks at the man critically then nods, though she’s frowning, before turning to Clint. She tips her head to one side, considering.

“Yes, you’ll do,” she says, and Clint looks down at himself, as if to judge to the validity of her statement and, when he registers what he’s seeing, he cries out and drops his knife.

Hovering over his bloody hand is another, larger and clean but unmistakably his. But, he realises, not his _yet_ ; this is another him, a _future_ him, superimposed over his own corporeal body, just like the girl. He moves his hand and the ghost hand moves too, lagging slightly, opening and closing as his hand does the same. He can see ghostly sneakers and jeans overlaid over his bloody legs.

What do he and the strange girl have in common, that their future selves hover around them like flies, translucent but very much _present_? What makes the man different?

“You, however.” The woman turns to the girl and in a flash Clint realises who she is, this woman dressed in red. Who she is and how she is able to bring him here, to this un-space between reality and annihilation. “You are not ready. Go.”

A door appears in the gloom and the woman points, but the girl straightens – _all_ of the girls straighten – and sets her jaw, looking as though she’s going to argue.

“Natalia Alianovna Romanova,” the woman says, her voice hard and laced with Command, “ _go_.”

Natalia Alianovna Romanova goes. She wrenches open the door and, although through it Clint can only see more un-space, when she steps through, trailing ghosts, she disappears. The last ghost through the door, the oldest in the combat gear, pulls it shut behind her. With the snick of the lock the door disappears too.

The Scarlet Witch, highest of her Order, turns back to Clint and the man.

She is beautiful, though Clint would expect nothing less. Power radiates off her like heat and her dress curls around her like mist, forming and reforming, occasionally exposing a bare shoulder, a pale thigh, the curve of a hip. Her eyes are like twin black voids filled with stars and her brown hair floats like seaweed in a gentle current. She is immortal and she is not; eternal and ephemeral. A Scarlet Witch has existed for as long as humans have told stories, for as long as they have dreamed, but this woman looks perhaps thirty.

Vaguely, Clint remembers the last Transference, how an enormous tree now stands somewhere in Ukraine, the result of the Scarlet Witch finding a new body. _This_ body. Wanda, Clint suddenly remembers. She was called Wanda Maximoff; a Roma girl from a poor village, now the purest conduit for all the magic of world.

Why is Clint _here_? What could he have _possibly done_ to call the attention of the most powerful being in the world? The other man is impassive but alert, clearly happy to wait out this situation until it resolves itself into something understandable, but Clint isn’t so patient. He’s no one. Why is he _here_?

He shifts, readying himself to speak, and pain once again lances through his leg. Instead he gasps and buckles, falling to his knees, though there is no jarring impact as there is nothing supporting him, just this endless, dim grey. The movement draws the Witch’s attention and her void-eyes land on him like a weight.

She tips her head to the side like a bird, curious, as though blood and pain is alien to her. Then the pain in Clint’s leg throbs, coalesces, seems to flow up until it is concentrated only at the puncture point, around the shaft of the arrow. Then, to Clint’s astonishment and fear, the arrow sprouts leaves, grows a bud, blooms into a large daisy, and dies, dropping away to reveal unbloodied cotton, dry and clean and unbroken.

“What are – ” he starts, scrambling for words, for understanding. “Why – ?”

But panic is robbing him of breath and he can’t finish his thoughts, let alone his sentences. Instead he simply hyperventilates, hands so tightly fisted they ache, eyes locked to impassive void-eyes.

Their staring contest, if anything so terrifying can be called a staring contest, is broken by the sound of a door opening, and Natalia Alianovna Romanova strides back into the un-space with a knife in her hand and murder writ large on her face. The sight of the Witch, Clint and the man, however, seemingly robs her of all movement.

She looks like the last of the little girl’s ghosts; perhaps twenty five and dressed in combat gear. She’s far more solid than her thirteen-year-old self was and this time she is alone.

“Better,” the Witch says with a nod, as the door falls shut and disappears behind her. “We can begin.”

“Что – ” Natalia Alianovna Romanova begins to say, brandishing her knife in the Witch’s direction, but she’s cut off as everything _shifts,_ the entire world moving around Clint in the blink of an eye. Suddenly everyone is closer; he, Natalia Alianovna Romanova and the man standing as three points of a triangle with the Witch circling them in the grey.

Clint’s not sure why, but the fact that the man has said nothing this entire time is making him supremely uncomfortable.

“ _Что, черт возьми, происходит_?” Natalia Alianovna Romanova snarls, and Clint doesn’t know what she’s saying, but the tone is demanding and he’s fairly sure he can guess the sentiment.

The Witch doesn’t answer her. Instead she circles the man and, when Natalia Alianovna Romanova goes to speak again, the Witch turns to her and places a finger to her lips. Clint doesn’t expect this to have any effect on her but, to his surprise, she falls silent.

“I will explain in due course,” the Witch says, turning back to the man. “But first…” She takes the man’s face in her hands and Clint is again struck by his impassivity. If the Witch was holding _Clint’s_ face he’s fairly sure he’d be bricking it, but the man does nothing past gripping his pistol more tightly, his shoulders tensing.

“What has happened…?” The Witch trails off, as if listening, and then frowns so thunderously that the un-space actually darkens.

“Bastards,” she says.

It seems like such an un-mystical thing for her to say that Clint is struck with the almost irresistible impulse to giggle. He doesn’t get far with that feeling though because all at once the Witch straightens, hands still on the man’s face, and Clint can feel power swirling around him like a tide. It pulls at his clothes, at his skin, at his _being_ , and he watches in astonishment as the man somehow becomes more _present_. His strange insubstantiality eases, his gaze seems to focus, and his edges become sharper, until for the first time since they all arrived in this strange un-space it seems that the man is _actually here_ , solid and terrifying and aware.

“Thank you,” the man says, his voice rough with apparent disuse. “Thank you.”

“The point is choice, James,” the Witch says cryptically, the un-space brightening as she lets go of his face. She turns to face them all and her void-eyes seem to sparkle. “The point is always choice.”

The Witch smiles at them then.

“A man wrote a song once,” she says, looking more like a thirty year old Ukrainian woman than an ancient Witch as she speaks. “An English song. It was to teach children their times tables, I think. In the scale of human lives, it’s a new song, but it probably seems old to you. Or,” she says as she looks at the man – James, apparently – and smiles sadly, “perhaps not. But he got one thing right, at least, that man. Three really is the magic number.”

With a flick of her wrists her palms are filled with red flames. The un-space seems to contract with their arrival, becoming small and close and intimate.

“It’s balancing,” she continues. “Three is hard to break. It’s enough to be solid, enough to hold onto, without being overwhelming. I am one of three.” Clint remembers this too; there’s a White Witch and a Black Witch. The White Witch is a Haitian woman, Maria Rambeau, who’s Transference over two centuries ago brought about the end of slavery. The Black Witch is a man from Norway whose Transference destroyed part of Oslo when Clint’s grandmother was a girl. Clint can’t remember his name. “That is the one thing that is chosen for you. If you are one of three, there isn’t much you can do about it.”

Clint looks around the un-space. He can see where this is going.

“But three threes?” the Witch says. “Oh, three threes is how the world _turns_. There are the Witches, and we are Life and we remember. And there are the Fates, and they are Death and they are eternal. And then there’s _you_ ” – something tugs in Clint’s chest – “and you are Balance. And you forget but oh, you _live_.”

The Scarlett Witch stands straight, power suddenly radiating from her like never before.

“You are here,” she says, her voice deep and echoing against nothing, full of Command, “because you chose. You saw your path unfurl beneath your feet and you chose differently. You chose the harder path, the more painful path, but the right path. You chose a bloody freedom. And while people choose bloody freedoms all the time, no one chose it when _you_ did. Timing is everything.”

The Scarlet Witch flares bright and Clint feels power well in his fingertips.

“This is your bloody freedom,” she says. “Becoming the spell that maintains the world. If you choose this, you will forget this encounter but gain each other. And you will _live_.”

“And if we choose otherwise?”

James’ voice is a low bass, a rumble below the rising magic.

“Then you will forget this encounter and gain nothing,” the Witch replies.

Clint looks across the un-space that separates him from James and Natalia Alianovna Romanova. The strange red glow that emanates from the Scarlet Witch reflects in their eyes, making them look otherworldly. What does she mean, that they’ll ‘gain each other’? What does she mean by gaining nothing? He looks at the unbroken line of his trousers, where only a little while ago there was blood and gore and the shaft of one of his own arrows, fired by someone he thought was a friend.

He can’t go back to the circus, there’s nothing for him there. He refused Jacques’ orders; refused to kill that girl, refused to take the money, refused any more part in their operation. If he goes back, he’ll be killed. Nothing Barney can do will change that – _if_ Barney decides to do anything to help, which Clint thinks unlikely at this point. Which leaves Clint alone and injured in a city he doesn’t know, with no friends, no money, one knife, and his former employers bearing down on him. That’s no choice at all, really.

He looks up, resolved, only to find both James and Natalia Alianovna Romanova looking at him expectantly. Their left arms are raised in the space between them, her hand wrapped around his wrist. What must their lives be like that they chose even more quickly than he did? He thinks about James’ blank expression and lethal stillness, Natalia Alianovna Romanova’s bloody clothes and weaponised sexuality, and decides he probably doesn’t want to know.

He raises his left hand, grabs Natalia Alianovna Romanova’s left wrist, and waits.

James hand connects and the world falls away.

Clint gasps as feeling rushes through him. It’s as though he’s sunk into the core of the world, heat and light engulfing him. The universe unspools around him, spiralling away in colours he can hear and lights he can touch, until he’s enveloped in stars, surrounded by light. A hundred hands caress his skin, a hundred mouths speak his name. There is pressure in his chest, a wild wanting that yearns to break free, and Clint thinks he might die from it, from the all-encompassing _everything_ that threatens to swallow him whole. It’s a bar across his shoulders, a weight against his palms, and more than one person could possibly bear, crushing him into the ground, into himself, into nothing. The entire weight of the world and its eight billion people, their hopes and dreams and expectations, their fears and loves and wants. It’s too much too much too much for him to bear, it’s crushing him, make it stop make it stop make it –

Suddenly the pressure eases and Clint pants as though he hasn’t breathed in eons. The weight is still there, but it’s manageable, shared. Hands flutter over his skin like butterflies, like silk, caressing and soothing and calming, and Clint breathes and breathes and breathes. He’s inhaling wood smoke, he’s inhaling the ocean, he’s inhaling stars. He feels endless; larger than everything – than anything – than _the world_. Unbreakable and undefeated and all powerful. Filled up to over-spilling, like he could reach up and touch all the faces of creation, or the back of the sky, or the beginning of time. There are hands in his and together they hold the world, the entire universe cupped in their entwined palms. They’re standing between two mirrors and they are endless, reflected backwards into infinity, powerful and eternal and –

Desire slams into him so hard he gasps. Lust snaps up his spine like lightning as the taste of blood blooms over his tongue. He’s hard and aching, drowning in want and surrounded by the smell of sex and sweat, pressed between undulating bodies. His hands grasp soft curves, hard muscle, slick skin, as all his layers are peeled off. It’s all too much, too overwhelming. The lust is all-encompassing, yes, but underneath it is an overwhelming staccato heartbeat of _love love love_ , so strong and so unfamiliar Clint almost cannot comprehend it. Love seeps into his bones, into the hidden parts of him, filling him like water. He feels stripped bare, spot lit. He’s never – it’s – _how do people cope_ – ?

 _You will gain each other and you will_ live.

A hand curls around his jaw, pulling his head up and back. Clint slits his eyes open, unaware that he had ever closed them, and is both surprised and unsurprised to find the three of them are no longer alone. Behind James stands an elderly Asian woman – Malaysian or Vietnamese – her hands tight against his jaw while a string of other people spool away from her into the gloom. Natalia Alianovna Romanova is in a similar position, an elderly Indian woman’s hands gently cupping her jaw from behind. Clint arches his back, eyes searching and – yes. The hands on his jaw belong to another elderly Asian woman, her own string of ghostly imprints spiralling away from her into the mirk.

Instinctively, Clint knows that the elderly Asian woman behind him is _himself_. Just as the Indian woman is Natalia Alianovna Romanova and the Malay woman is James.

“Last time I did this,” the Witch says, “I pretentiously quoted Shakespeare, just for a change of pace. It was poorly received.” Clint sees the Witch smile out of the corner of his eye as the woman behind James rolls her eyes. “Still,” the Witch grins. “When shall we three meet again,” she quotes, her hands blazing brightly as she wraps them around where Clint, James, and Natalia Alianovna Romanova’s are entwined, “in thunder, lightning, or in rain?”

 _When the hurly-burly’s done_ , Clint thinks reflexively, because the fortune teller at the circus loved Shakespeare and had quoted parts often enough that even Clint could recall them. _When the battle’s lost and won. That will be ere the set of sun. Where the place?_

Behind him, the woman-that-is-him turns his head, sealing her mouth over his own. Heat and light spills from between her lips and into him, and something hooks in behind his heart, tugging tugging tugging until something is wrenched loose. Light cascades through him, down his arm, and into the hand wrapped around James’ wrist, which suddenly blazes with heat. There is a twist and a crack and something clicks into place, as though some previously empty part of him has suddenly been filled.

And now, behind his heartbeat, he can feel the echo of two others.

“Where the place?” the Witch says, her voice sounding amused, though thin and far away.

“Upon the water,” comes the echoing reply, voices layered as though an entire crowd is speaking, “before full moon.”

_Upon the water, before full moon._

There’s a pulling sensation, a gasp and a click and then something rattles as it’s kicked across blacktop.

Clint blinks away a strange feeling of vertigo.

Perhaps it’s just the adrenaline messing with his vision, but he could swear he just saw the outline of a door in the gloom at the end of the alley and a curl of red fire. Is someone else here? Clint curses colourfully to himself. People shouldn’t smoke in alleyways like creepers, not when he’s trying to hide from _actual villains_. He briefly considers calling out, telling whoever it is to fuck off, but the idea is derailed by a voice snarling out, “I’m gonna fucking _kill_ him.”

Buck. Shit. Clint presses himself further into the darkness behind the dumpster. Hopefully the shadows here are deep enough to keep him hidden because he’s fucked otherwise. He dropped his knife after cutting Marcus and he never even got a chance to pick up his bow after everything went down, so all he has is a quiver of arrows at his hip and his stubborn fists. Probably fine under normal circumstances, but pretty crappy here.

Christ, he’s lucky Buck’s arrow missed him. A thigh wound would be such a pain in the ass to deal with on top of everything else.

There’s more scuffling and Clint hears Buck curse him out again, but eventually their footsteps fade, leaving behind only the usual sounds of a city past midnight. Clint lets out a long breath in relief and leans against the dumpster.

The circus moves on tomorrow – no sense in staying after the massive heist they pulled off, and doubly so now that there are _bodies_ – heading south and east, so all Clint has to do is keep hidden until then. Difficult, considering people will be looking for him the entire night, but not impossible. Clint is still good at his job, despite finally growing a fucking moral compass.

He inches closer to the mouth of the alley, keeping a wary eye out for Buck or anyone from the circus, but they all seem to have gone. One of the men who had been arguing when Clint arrived is still there though, lighting up with tattooed fingers that denote his status as a Low Member of the Order. Clint’s hit with another wave of vertigo and stumbles.

For a brief moment he feels as though his heartbeat has gained an echo, but the feeling fades almost as soon as it arrived.

“Woah there,” the man growls, catching Clint by the elbow to prevent him from falling. “Steady now.”

 _Upon the water, before full moon_ , Clint thinks inanely.

Wait, what?

“Thanks,” he says to the man and then, because for some reason it feels right, he asks, “Hey, which way is Lake Michigan?”

_Upon the water._

The man squints at him, cigarette clamped between his teeth, before pointing with tattooed fingers down the street. “All the way to the end,” he says.

Clint nods.

 _Upon the water_ , he thinks. He looks up and finds the moon hanging pregnant and wan above the city’s light pollution – two days from full, if he remembers the circus fortune-teller correctly. _Before full moon_.

He feels a tug in his chest, insistent.

“Smoke?” the man asks, gesturing with his cigarette.

Clint shakes his head and turns towards Lake Michigan. _Upon the water, before full moon_.

He starts walking.


End file.
